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We live in a digital and mobile world where Google, the Internet and
mobile technologies have disrupted traditional classroom learning and
requirements for immediate recall.

Internet-accessible resources
are extensions of our memory. There are over 30 trillion links and 2
billion plus users. Our students are using these resources from all
around the world to learn. Tomorrow, there will be more and more
technologies that thrust information at students, stimulating curiosity
and thinking.

Our challenge is how to adapt our learning strategy in a way
that leverages and maximises these opportunities, to facilitate what
will be needed of our students in future.

Unfortunately,
remembering facts and regurgitating them in exams has limited real-world
value today. The need to store facts in our head is vastly reduced
because of the expansive store of knowledge now at our fingertips. What
is valued is the ability to use knowledge critically and analytically.

Students
today need more skills and competence than ever before to function in
tomorrow’s world. One of the most important skills is the ability to
reinvent themselves for lifelong learning. They also need to develop
both technical competence and emotional maturity.

METHODS STILL OLD-SCHOOL

While the world has changed, schools and educational systems, however, have been slow to adapt.

New
ways of delivering content online through massive open online courses
(MOOCs), such as those organised by Coursera and Udacity, have become
popular with millions of students around the globe. These methods are in
their early stages; most still use a lecture format, albeit delivered
to an audience of millions.

Indeed, traditional lectures remain
the dominant method of teaching around the world, even though numerous
studies indicate that this approach is ineffective by itself. At best,
these methods provide only basic information; conceptual understanding
comes from more interactive learning.

Teaching is not simply
presenting ideas and insights, nor filling students’ heads with what we
know or transmitting information. Learning is not just committing facts
to memory but the ability to critique, synthesise, analyse, use and
apply information.

However, the curricula for most subjects are
packed with vast content — those facts that faculty feel students should
commit to memory; facts that are now available at their fingertips. The
packed curriculum leaves little time for students to acquire a
conceptual understanding of the subject and how to use that knowledge.

The
addition of greater interactivity is essential to make knowledge
transfer in universities more meaningful in today’s world. But how do we
integrate the digital world’s resources into classroom-based learning?

How
do we create the foundation for lifelong learning, so that someone
recognises what he knows and what he doesn’t know; knows how to seek
information; knows how to use and critically assess multiple resources;
and can effectively articulate his rationale for solutions to problems?
These are key issues that educators around the world are beginning to
tackle.

REAL-WORLD USE

To accomplish these
aims, we have to be clear what is it that we want students to learn. We
have to understand that recall of knowledge or fact, as traditionally
assessed in school, is only the first step.

A key element in any
directed learning environment is the assessment of competence in that
knowledge. Psychologist George Miller developed a simple framework for
assessing levels of knowledge in relation to competence, specifically in
medicine, but it is applicable to other subjects.

The first step —
“knows” — is knowledge about a subject, such as recalling facts. The
second is to “know how” to use the knowledge, such as in analysing a
problem. The third step is to demonstrate proficiency in applying the
knowledge — “shows how”. In medicine, for example, this is assessed by
observed examination of patients or actor-patients.

The fourth
step is to see how the knowledge is integrated into the real world. This
requires assessing competence when a person is working and, in the case
of physicians, is part of the ongoing assessment after they enter
practice. The final step, “mastery”, refers to the competence of an
expert who teaches the next generation.

The field of medicine is
fortunate in that the bedside clinical experience — where students talk
to and examine the patient and relate what they find to lessons or go
back to their resources to fill in the gaps in their knowledge about the
condition — assists in the long-term retention and better
conceptualisation of knowledge.

But this approach, of linking
what is learnt to the real world, can just as easily be adapted to any
other field of learning, helping students to consolidate and learn to
apply concepts.

This is the start of a weekly series on
learning and education. In the articles to follow, Professor K Ranga
Krishnan will use what is known from pedagogical work, psychology and
the neuroscience of learning, as well as experience at Duke-NUS, to
contribute to the ongoing conversation in Singapore on approaches to
education.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

K Ranga Krishnan
is Dean of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. A
clinician-scientist and psychiatrist, he chaired the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Duke University Medical Centre
from 1998 to 2009. This article has input from his colleagues, Drs
Robert Kamei and Sandy Cook.